Celebrating recovery

The final seven years of David Lewis’ life were spent clean and sober, something that his family will celebrate Saturday with the second annual David Lewis 5K walk/run in Falmouth.

David Still II photo

PREP WORK – David and Nancy Lewis get t-shirts and gift bags ready for the Sept. 1 David Lewis 5K Walk/Run in Falmouth, which honors their late son [{seen in photo] and celebrates recovery from addiction.

David Lewis 5K celebrates a life and a way of life

The final seven years of David Lewis’ life were spent clean and sober, something that his family will celebrate Saturday with the second annual David Lewis 5K walk/run in Falmouth.

“Most everybody has been affected by addiction in some form or another,” his father, artist David Lewis of Osterville, said. “People are responding to that. And there hasn't been enough emphasis to emphasize recovery.”

September is National Recovery Month, and all of the proceeds from the race will benefit Gosnold on Cape Cod, a facility that helped the younger Lewis find his way out of his addictions. His death at age 39 in April 2010 was the result of a massive, unexpected heart attack.

Recovery is something that the elder Lewis understands. He’s been sober for 35 years.

In 1977, Lewis had a choice, enter recovery or lose his family, an ultimatum issued by his wife, Nancy.

“I could accept that I was crazy, immoral or whatever,” Lewis said, “but I could not say I was a drunk.”

He chose his family, and has been sober since, though reluctant at first.

“I thought, ‘What a bunch of God damned losers.’ Then it dawned on me,” Lewis said of his initial meetings listening to others. From there, slowly, he came to recognize the truth of his addiction, what it was doing to himself and his family.

While the substances were different – it was alcohol for Lewis and harder drugs for his son – the resulting damage to family and friends was the same.

“My biggest regret is that I didn't spend enough time with David,” Lewis said. He said that while he was home and around, it wasn’t the kind of time that deepened their relationship.

There would be a time for that connection, but it took a sometimes difficult path.

Lewis and Nancy had three daughters, and decided that they wanted to expand the family through adoption. They also chose to seek a hard-to-place baby. Working through Catholic Charities in Boston, they found David, whose birth mother left Guam to have her child in Boston. He was six weeks old when he went home with the Lewises in 1970.

His birth-mother was Chamorro, the indigenous people of Guam, and his birth-father was French. His Polynesian appearance was a source of school-aged taunts, Lewis recalled, and David had to deal with being different.

“David did not know how to walk. He would run everywhere,” his father said.

David started with marijuana in high school. By the time he was in his 20s, Lewis and his wife realized that he was in trouble.

Even when he was using, family remained very important to David, Lewis said, and he would attend family functions and want to be around them.

“He had gotten into the hard stuff. Drugs. You could see physically, mentally,” Lewis said. “He was living in what had to be a crack house.”

In early 2003, the family reached out to Gosnold for an intervention. It was CEO Ray Tamasi who took the lead.

At the time, Tamasi was the only one at Gosnold doing interventions. Since then, the treatment facility has gone from doing a handful of interventions a year to perhaps 70. He said that in 90 percent or greater of the cases, the individual chooses treatment.

"There are very few people who can withstand the power of that emotion," Tamasi said.

For Tamasi, the day was memorable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a blinding snowstorm that threatened to call off the intervention.

“They said ‘This is going to happen,’” Tamasi recalled.

Lewis recalled that after the family went through the steps outlined by Tamasi, David balked. After some additional words from Tamasi, he agreed to enter treatment.

"What they were trying to communicate to him was not threat ... It was really a message of 'We love you. We want to make you better,'" Tamasi said.

That snowy day, which greatly extended the trip from Hyannis to the Falmouth facility, was David’s clean and sober day.

One of the promises Lewis made to his son as he entered recovery was that if he got clean, they would do a project together. David was a carpenter, and Lewis spent 35 years as a plumber.

That promise was kept in the form of a run-down home on Route 6A in West Barnstable that father and son spent 14 months restoring into David’s home. It also rebuilt their relationship.

It was during this renovation that David suggested that they go bowling. Lewis said he wasn’t much of a bowler, but agreed. Within two weeks they were in a league and spent the next seven years traveling back and forth to Plymouth to bowl.

“That was guys’ time out,” Lewis said, further cementing the already strong bond.

“When Dave died, I couldn’t continue,” he said.

It’s the family’s willingness to talk openly and honestly about their recovery stories that Tamasi finds so important. “Most people don’t want to talk about this,” he said.

It’s something that Lewis does with full honesty about himself and his son.

The increase in interventions at Gosnold has as much to do with a shift in the facility’s approach as it does about the need. Tamasi said that four years ago, a decision was made to treat the family as the primary patient.

Tamasi said that a family knows well in advance of an individual’s acknowledgement that there’s a problem. Understanding that, Tamasi said families need to understand that there are options.

“The family doesn't need to wait around until there's a disaster,” he said.

“When the family changes the ways in which they respond and which they react … you start to see changes, changes in the family and changes in the addicted individual,” Tamasi said.

In the years after the intervention and treatment, the Lewises stayed in touch with Tamasi, checking in, and after David’s death provided the opportunity to celebrate his life, and more broadly, recovery.

David was not a runner, but sister Amy and her husband, Sean, are. They helped organize the first race last year, which drew 250 participants. Pre-registration this year was at 168 as of Wednesday, a precursor to a significantly larger showing for the second running.

An artist, Lewis’ work can be seen across Barnstable and the Cape. He sculpted the full-size statues of the Sachem Iyanough at the head of the Hyannis Village Green; the Otises, James and Mercy, in front of Barnstable Superior Courthouse; the Firefighters Memorial in front of the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills Fire Headquarters in Centerville; a conceptual piece evoking sails in the lobby of Cape Cod Hospital’s Mugar Building, among others. A Lewis-sculpted bust of Wampanoag Chief John Peters, Slow Turtle, is on display at Foxwoods Casino.

David participated in rendezvous gatherings, re-enacting authentic 1700s-era campsites. The two feathers he tied to his musket earned him the nickname “Two Feathers.”

That was the inspiration for the pencil drawing that adorns T-shirts and literature about the race. It was drawn by Lewis, who also did a pencil portrait of his son.

At the funeral, Lewis said there were two hawks circling overhead, which he took as a sign.

The race website has a video of Tamasi and Chris Herren, the former Celtics guard who’s become an advocate for recovery awareness, that was produced by Jeremy Lewis, David’s nephew.

Herren had a conflict (he’s scheduled to speak to the Chicago Bears’ rookies Friday night) and won’t be able to attend the race, but Lewis is hopeful he’ll be available next year.

The T-shirts, brochures and other promotional items are done up in purple, drawn from Herren’s Project Purple, an initiative to break the stigma of addiction.

“It's all about recovery and celebrating recovery and that's the connection,” Lewis said.

Along with the race, there are a number of raffle items available, as well as the “super raffle,” a week’s stay at a seaside condo in Yarmouth. Tickets for the super raffle are $25.

On the day of David’s wake, Lewis said the line of friends stretched to the street and didn’t let up.

“It’s the power of good,” Lewis said.

The David Lewis 5k Walk/Run starts Saturday at 9 a.m. at Gosnold on Cape Cod, 200 Ter Heun Drive, Falmouth. Registration can be done online, or the day of the race. More information about the race and how to donate are available at davidlewis5k.org